User:Sross (Public Policy)/Editing basics script

This is a walkthrough of the basics of wiki markup--how to make bold text and links to other wiki pages. You can try out everything from this video in

your own user sandbox page. If you don't already have a sandbox page

enter "Help:Sandbox tutorial" in the Wikipedia search box; that page has instructions for starting a sandbox.

To begin, press the

edit button on your sandbox page. This will

open an edit window where you can begin these exercises. We'll start with the very basics:

bold. Bolded text appears at

the very beginning of most articles to

mark the subject of the article,

so it's one of the first things you'll need to learn.

You can make text bold by

highlighting it with your mouse, then clicking the

"B" button in the edit toolbar. This adds

three single quote marks at the beginning of

what you want to be bold, and another

three single quote marks at the end.

Let's see what this looks like.

Go to the bottom of the edit window,

enter a brief edit summary to describe your edit,

and press "Save page". It's good to get in the habit of leaving edit summaries every you time edit. It helps you keep track of what you've done, and it makes it easier to collaborate with others.

You should have some

bold text on your test page now. Press the

edit button and

let's continue. This time, we'll make

wikilinks. These are

links that go from one page on Wikipedia to another.

Let's try it with the word "bold". To create a wikilink,

highlight the word, then click the

link icon in the edit toolbar. This brings up

the "insert link" dialog. Clicking

the "insert link" button will add

the code for a link:

two opening square brackets, followed by

the article you want to link to--in this case, bold--, followed by

two closing square brackets. Now

enter an edit summary and save.

The word "bold" is now blue, and links to the article about bold. Well,

the article for bold is actually called "Emphasis (typography)", and that's where the link redirects us.

But what if that's not what you wanted to link to? What if you meant

boldness, the opposite of being shy? Let's

edit the page again. This time, in the

insert link dialog, replace

"bold" with

"boldness" in the "target page or URL" section. Now, pressing

"insert link" creates a

"piped link", which is the wiki markup for a link with text that is different from the name of the article it points to. It consists of

two opening square brackets, like a plain link, followed by

the name of the article you want to link to, boldness, then

a pipe -- which you can insert by pressing shift-backlash on most keyboards -- after the article name. Then

the text you want for the link: bold, then

two closing square brackets. That's

text. If you

save your changes [don't forget the edit summary]

you'll see the result: the link says

bold, and when you

click, you get the article "boldness". So go ahead. Start editing.

Be Bold!